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SCIENCE BIRD BRAIN 1 × 53 min. Written and directed by John Capener and Steve Nicholls HD, 5.1 and Stereo Executive producer: Sabine Holzer or decades, we thought that birds understand about the physical properties were primitive animals, relying on of their tools. instinct and little else. But recently we’ve come to realise how wrong More recently, researchers studied other SCIENCE Fthis idea is. This fi lm explores the very bird families, especially parrots. They are latest research into bird intelligence, famed for being able to talk, but are including research by various international they just pretty feathers with a talent universities. for mimicry? Parrot research shows that blue-fronted Amazons, Hyacinth and Lear’s The crow family fi rst started to show us macaws can all solve the string-pull test how wrong we were about bird minds. For just as well as ravens. some time, ravens have amazed scientists with their sharp thinking. They quickly But king of the parrot minds are New mastered a puzzle called the string-pull Zealand’s keas. These mountain parrots test, where food hangs from a branch on a not only complete the simple string- length of string. Ravens fi nished it quickly, pull test, but solve it with extra strings without any trial and error, showing that arranged to complicate the puzzle. they solved the problem in their minds. Researchers from the University of Since then, research on other members of Vienna have given their keas several new the crow family has revealed even more tests — from problem solving to co-opera- sophisticated thinking. tive tasks, even starting to test their basic understanding of grammar. Rooks form large social fl ocks, sometimes numbering in tens of thousands. Social Research by the Konrad Lorenz Institute interactions could have contributed to the shows how ravens bury a useless object, evolution of intelligence in apes, so that such as a toy, in front of an observer to scientists ask if the same is true in birds. see what they do. If the observer steals Rooks’ social interactions have revealed the toy, then the raven remembers hierarchies and relationships surprisingly and changes its future hiding strategy similar to those in monkeys or apes. when it has something valuable to hide. Understanding another mind and charac- The crow family has also shown another ter shows the ravens’ ability to imagine sophisticated ability — tool use. New different viewpoint — an ability as sophisti- Caledonian crows not only use tools, but cated as that of any ape. also make tools for specifi c jobs. Ongoing research by Oxford University and the Max Perhaps now, ‘bird brain’ is no longer an Plank Institute is testing what the birds insult — but rather a compliment … SCIENCE www.terramater.com Terra Mater Factual Studios GmbH, Wambachergasse 2, 1130 Vienna / Austria, phone +43-1-87003-0, fax +43-1-87003-27609, offi [email protected].

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ABSTRACT BOOK Listed Alphabetically by Last Name Of
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